Adventures with lightweight and minimalist software for Linux

lancat: Zero-configuration network transfer option

Quick on the heels of pyncp, I got a short note about Graham Edgecombe’s lancat.

As you might imagine, lancat works a lot like pyncp, with a couple of exceptions. Yes, it’s intended as another fire-and-forget, zero-configuration network transfer option. And as you can see in the pictures (which I snapped a little too early), one machine “sends,” and another “receives,” and they listen for one another in the mean time.

A couple of small differences though. And not just that lancat is written in ruby, and pyncp was in python (and ncp was in C).

First, lancat is apparently desingned to work like a pipe, with your source file redirected into it on the sending end, and out of it on the receiving end. This might lend itself to use in scripts or with other tools.

Second, lancat’s function is determined by a flag, not by interpreting a command in sequence. That might prove more convenient, or at least quicker than typing out a full command for pyncp/ncp to interpret.

Aside from that, lancat works much as might be expected, but comes with the same caveats as pyncp did: There is no provision for security (or compression) unless to force it before and after.

But there are tools for that, and given that lancat handles pipes and redirects well, it shouldn’t be a big issue. 😉